


Haze

by Medie



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's been here before with the sound of Fire Nation boots striking ground like thunder, flames eating up everything in sight, and so much screaming everywhere she turns</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haze

**Author's Note:**

> Written [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) for the prompt "combat scenarios" -- All right, ATLA style, but still.

She loses Sokka in the smoke. Thick and acrid, it makes her eyes burn and every breath a fight. She doubles over with a gasp, coughing as a hut falls to cinders, and stumbles away from the ever-thickening ashes with tears stinging her eyes.

It's a second, nothing more, but when she raises her eyes, still burning with the smoke, Sokka is gone. She opens her mouth to call his name and gets another lungful of smoke for her trouble. Chest burning, she looks for any kind of sign of him, but there's nothing.

Katara coughs, spits, and coughs again. Fear snakes its way through her heart, the first hints of familiar panic, and she presses her hands to her skirts to stop the shaking. She's been here before with the sound of Fire Nation boots striking ground like thunder, flames eating up everything in sight, and so much screaming everywhere she turns. She's seen for herself how this can end, her dreams remind her almost every night.

 _Sokka_. She closes her eyes, listening for a familiar voice in the midst of the cries, but the building behind her begins to collapse in on itself and she stumbles away. Dust and smoke billow into the air behind her and, for the moment, she's safely hidden from the soldiers. For the moment.

The ground shifts beneath her feet, rising and sliding toward the burning building behind her. Katara trips and falls, skinning her palms, feeling the bite of snow and ice instead of the grit and sand. "This isn't the same," she tells herself, pushing to her feet again.

She makes herself move, foot before foot, and wishing for even a mite of Aang's bending to clear the smoke around them. She can barely see the Earthbender a few feet away, even though she can see another wave of the ground moving toward the ruined hall and the flames. Finding Sokka and Aang in this mess—she blinks hard against a fresh wave of smoke-induced tears and keeps going.

It's slow, but she finds a wall and feels her way along, drawing water from barrels in her path and using it to douse what she can. It feels like not enough, it _never_ feels like enough, and she growls under her breath.

Fury lifts the water from the earth before her, pulling stray droplets together into a rope of water that curls around her clenched fists, the currents and eddies whispering over her skin until she hurls it out, quenching the fires burning about her.

Steam rises to replace the smoke and she calls it back to her.

"Seriously, Katara, just once, could you try to _not_ hit me with that stuff?"

She whirls not quite believing her ears. Her eyes are another story. Drenched head to toe, Sokka emerges from what's left of the smoke and steam, wringing out his clothes and giving her a woebegone look that's impossible to be a dream.

"What?" he asks, giving up on his clothes. "What's that look for?"

Katara thinks of what to say, of how to explain, but no words come. There aren't any words that could even begin to explain.

She settles for another whip of water and the great satisfaction of Sokka's yelp.

"Let's find Aang," she says, walking past him. "And don't do that again."


End file.
